One such black conservative is Ken Hamblin, “the Black Avenger.” During the 1980’s and ‘90’s, Hamblin, labeled “the black Rush Limbaugh,” was a nationally syndicated radio talk show host heard on roughly 200 stations. He also was a columnist who authored two books, Pick a Better Country and Plain Talk and Common Sense from the Black Avenger.

It’s a pity that about 10 years or so ago, Hamblin left the media world for a life of anonymity, for at no other time has our country been more in need of his “plain talk and common sense.”

From the perspective of the leftist, even the most pathological of blacks is a victim entitled to government assistance. In glaring contrast, being the native of the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn and the son of West Indian immigrants that he is, Hamblin knows all too well that while some people really are deserving of compassion, others deserve condemnation. In the latter group are those who he refers to as “black trash.” Hamblin says that “the black underclass” that is “at the heart of the black welfare culture today” needs to be called out for what it is: “black trash.”

Against the objection that he “hate[s] black people,” Hamblin’s reply is blunt: If “human trash exists among whites, it also can exist among blacks.” It is not poverty that distinguishes “human trash,” but, primarily, the “minimal regard for civilized society and the generally accepted rules of humanity” that characterize white and black trash alike. Hamblin identifies the black teenagers who attacked the Central Park jogger, Reginald Denny’s assailants, and the black adolescent females who harassed and pummeled a white woman at a Detroit festival as examples of “socially and morally deviant black trash.”

The big difference between white trash and black trash is that while the former is called out for what it is, the latter is not only excused but affirmed by “white liberals and black community leaders” alike. Some “attributes of this [black trash] culture—like its street argot and its high rate of teen pregnancies—are actually extolled…as perhaps worthy of consideration as multicultural counterparts to the values of the white American middle class.”

The legitimation of the black trash subculture has led to the idealization of “black thugs.” Hamblin is indignant: “These black thugs, these street punks and predators, have been allowed—in some cases, encouraged—to believe that their acts of violence against innocent people and property are merely blows for justice” and “black liberation and black sovereignty.” In reality, “these boys are a far cry from social crusaders. These boys are empty vessels.”

There are other “fringe elements” that, when perceived as endangering American civilization, are either “scorned” or, in some instances, “snuffed out.” But the “black gangs”—which places “black trash on the map”—are “not only tolerated but excused by many.”

By romanticizing the black trash subculture, we also encourage and romanticize those young black single mothers who Hamblin refers to as “brood mares.” The latter are “breeding in unspeakable numbers” with perhaps “more than 90 percent of their babies” being “born out of wedlock.” While the gang members “are the foot soldiers of the black-trash welfare culture,” these young mothers “are the brood mares whose sole function is to keep replenishing the rank and file, collecting another welfare entitlement for each newborn.”

The glorification of the culture or subculture of “black trash” gives rise to the glorification of, not just “black thugs” and “broodmares,” but “the poverty pimp.” Hamblin explains: “Poverty pimps are the grossest beneficiaries and purveyors of the Myth of the Hobbled Black,” the ideological narrative that blacks “can’t get ahead in America because white people have kept—and continue to keep—them down.” Professionally and monetarily, this notion is a win-win for black poverty pimps, for it “is what generates the guilt that produces the dollars for their districts.” Washington D.C. Mayor Marion Barry, California Representative Maxine Waters, and Al Sharpton are among those who Hamblin charges with being “poverty pimps.”

No peddler of the nonsense that has wrought such damage to his country is safe from the Black Avenger—including and especially those suspects to whom he refers as “egg-sucking dog liberals.” These are “white liberals” who are guilty of “sucking the substance out of the promise America holds for its black citizens [.]” Along with “black poverty pimps,” white liberals “spread the propaganda that black trash are in their sad predicament only because they are victims of racism [.]” Their ultimate goal, Hamblin believes, is not to help blacks—they continue to harm them—but to “remake America” by way of a “very anti-American…socialist agenda [that] flies in the face of every piece of the American Dream that got me where I am today.”

At this time, when the left, “by whichever means necessary,” proceeds full steam ahead with the very “socialist agenda” that Hamblin detected back in the 1990’s, we can only long for a return of the Black Avenger.

Jack Kerwick

I have a Ph.D. in philosophy from Temple University, a master's degree in philosophy from Baylor University, and a bachelor's degree in philosophy and religious studies from Wingate University. I teach philosophy at several colleges in the New Jersey and Pennsylvania areas.